Police Substation in Park Brings Praise, Criticism

Santa Monica’s first police substation, opened six months ago in Virginia Avenue Park, has drawn mixed reactions from residents and community leaders.

Supporters of the substation, located in an area of predominantly black and Latino low- to moderate-income families, characterized it as a friendly place in a park that had been taken over by drug-dealing and gang activity. They said the police presence has made it a family park again.

Critics, however, object to the role of police at the substation and called for more foot patrols in the neighborhood. An NAACP official has asked the city to investigate complaints of racism.

One critic, Virginia Park Advisory Committee member Clyde Smith, said singling out Virginia Avenue Park for a substation is racist because it assumes that if “there are a lot of blacks and browns up there, there must be high crime.”

Police said they do not have figures on crime rates before and after the substation was opened. But Hector Cavazos, gang unit coordinator for the Police Department, said the park is a hangout for many of Santa Monica’s 200 active gang members. There have been drive-by shootings, fights, drug sales and purse snatchings, police and residents said.

Before the police substation opened in the park’s recreation building, residents said, people getting off the bus at Pico Boulevard in the evening would walk down to 20th Street rather than through Virginia Park.

Police have responded by keeping the substation open Monday through Saturday. Officers Duke Torrez and Cesar Scolari, who are assigned full time to the substation, handle more than a dozen visitors a day, more in the summer.

Residents visit the substation to report everything from missing children to drug deals. Scolari and Torrez spend time with young people, urging them to leave gangs. The officers tell parents if their children have become members of the Graveyard Crips, the Santa Monica 13 Lil’ Locos or the 17th Street gang.

“It goes beyond what you think of as police-type enforcement,” Torrez said. The substation officers have worked with the city Cultural and Recreation Department to sponsor dances and softball tournaments between police officers and youths. A Kids’ Fair in September featured sack races, fingerprinting and a police horse and car on display.

It’s “real kid-oriented,” Helen Benjamin, senior administrative analyst with the Police Department, said.

Scolari, who often wears jeans to work, said that with two desks, a coffeepot and an IBM computer for computer games, the substation is more convenient and comfortable to neighbors than headquarters.

“It’s a more relaxed atmosphere. . . . We’re really meeting the people here,” he said. “We’re reaching out to those people who would otherwise never go to the police station for assistance.”

He said many of them are Latinos who fear police because they fear deportation or because police in their native country may have been corrupt or abusive.

Neighbors asked the Police Department for a substation and patrols. “(We wanted) police to walk by and wave while we’re watering the lawn; (police) to know who lives here,” Joyce Budzeleski, a 12-year resident of the park neighborhood, said.

Fear Dissipates

“Old people, families are out, instead of just hiding in their houses, fearing repercussions,” Budzeleski said.

“You can walk through the park without getting molested,” said Vabel Reed, who has lived across the street from the park for 37 of her 73 years and is chairwoman of the Virginia-Delaware Area Block Club.

The focus on youths and gangs evolved after the office opened, police said. It was summer, and youths, including gang members, “were coming in, had nothing to do, nowhere to go,” said Benjamin, who helped plan the substation. Use of the park has increased by about 15%, she said.

Scolari said the officers tell gang members: “Look at what you’re doing. Is it worth it?”

Although “we don’t, and don’t know that we ever will, have their (gang members’) trust,” they are listening, Cavazos said. Police and neighbors said some have begun to act and dress differently, and two gang members, with the officers’ help, landed jobs at Santa Monica Airport.

“If we can get these kids, these gang-bangers, whatever you want to call them, jobs . . . and a feeling of worthiness, they’re not going to commit crimes,” Police Chief James Keane has said. “Some people said policemen shouldn’t be social workers. But I don’t look upon that as social work, I look upon that as crime prevention.”

Police and many residents said they didn’t expect the center to succeed so quickly. “It’s one of the greatest things that ever happened in the community,” said Reed, who is also a member of the Virginia Park Advisory Committee.

No Endorsement

But at the Pico Neighborhood Assn.’s annual assembly last month, which drew about 80 residents, a resolution to endorse the police substation and support its permanent settlement in the park was narrowly defeated. Instead, resolutions urging more foot patrols and more association involvement with the Police Department and the recreation and parks division were approved.

Some members objected to the police “setting up weightlifting and computer programs for kids,” as Edward Bell, an association board member, said. Bell said he would rather have the police patrolling the streets.

“If you put a police officer in your house, your house is going to be safe. But one block away, your neighbor is being robbed,” he said. “It’s a waste of manpower to just make your house safe, when the officer could patrol your house, your neighbor’s house on one side, and the neighbor on the other side.”

The park, Bell said, “is being run by police. . . . I want park and rec to run a very strong program at Virginia Park, and I want Chief Keane to run a very strong program away from the park.”

‘Highly Paid Baby Sitters’

Clyde Smith called the police “highly paid baby-sitters” and said the neighborhood is not a “hard-core gang activity center.” It’s not “South-Central Santa Monica,” he said. Smith, the father of two teen-agers, added that he does not “perceive myself to be in danger because the park is filled with black and brown youth” who are too often presumed to be gang members.

He said he would not object if police were put in all Santa Monica parks, but to single out Virginia Park is racist because it assumes that because “there are a lot of blacks and browns up there, there must be high crime.”

The local chapter of the NAACP is asking the city to investigate complaints of racism, said NAACP President Norm Curry. He said some black youth stay away from the park because the police are there. He said, in one instance black youths were reportedly detained and searched after a fight at the park, while Latino youths were allowed to go.

However, the NAACP is not taking a position on whether the police station should be in the park, because neighborhood residents who are NAACP members are on both sides of the issue, Curry said.

Another view was offered last week by some of the teen-agers who use the park. Cleveland Rogers, 16, said that the park was “ragin’, all messed up. . . . There was fighting, violence” before the police opened the substation. People stole Ping-Pong paddles and put graffiti in the game room, said Marcus Sanchez, 16, who was playing foosball on a table still covered with gang names.

Bobby Reese, 16, who lives across the street from the park, said he no longer sees fights there.

“We thought the police were going to come in and bother and hassle us,” he said. “But they’ve just be come friends.”